EMILY Carr was a true critic, and in many ways a harsh teacher. This may sound unfair; I do not mean it to be. I am writing this of the Emily Carr I knew for more than twenty-five years. She was always very fair. When asked for an opinion, she gave one.
When new pupils started, Miss Carr would say it was best that both she and they should know at the beginning how much Art they could absorb, how much they already had. If they lost interest after a scornful comment, as so often happened, she would suggest that they take music, or dancing as a possible career. But if, after a lesson, the work was good, or showed promise, or the effort put into it was sincere her few words of praise would inspire you to the greatest heights, set you right on top of the world.
When first I started painting I made two fatal mistakes. First, I painted what I saw as clearly as possible. This was very wrong. “Any fool can copy, Child, if he tries long enough; what you are to do is create, get the feeling of your subject and put that there.” I had a bad time for a while. I would see a strip of beach, lovely sand, blue skies, green waters, purple mountains in the distant haze, everything just right, and I was not to paint that, but rather the feeling I got, the strength of it!
Then, the other mistake I made was that I was always in a hurry. The scene might change, or a storm blow up; it did not take much to get me in a dither and on would go the colour, as it came from the tube. To say that Miss Carr considered this an outrage is to put it mildly! I soon knew that no painter ever uses any colour as it is, but adds a little of this, and some of that. Miss Carr’s knowledge of colour was almost unbelievable, yet as soon as she found someone with a true talent all she knew was his for the asking. With her there was no jealous guarding of professional secrets as is so often the case.
After my modelling lesson was over, there was generally from fifteen minutes to half an hour left, before dinner, that I could use as I liked, to mould a figure or a dish. When it was done, she would criticize it. One day, as I was listening to a story she was telling at the end of a lesson, I made a little ash tray. It had three turtles climbing up the side, pushing with their back feet extended, the feet being the legs for the dish. With a sharp stick I drew the designs on the turtles’ backs, representing the shells, and lines around their faces, making a glad one, a sad one, and a surprised one!
When the story was finished I handed her the dish. She reached for it and looked at it; then, laying it down, she took my hand in her two beautiful ones and said, “This little pig went to market, did it? No, not this little pig. For these little pigs, we must have some other place to go. Now let me see,
This little pig went to Art school, and studied when she was home;
And this little pig loved Nature, animals made her glad;
This little pig loved beauty, on land, in the air, in her heart;
And this little pig was loyal, would take anyone’s part;
And this little pig is my little pig, that I’ll keep for my very own.
Run now, time to wash and get home!”
My Mother had a lovely dinner ready, and I generally had two servings, but that night I was full, full of a happy, holy feeling that made my throat tight, so that it was hard to talk. I was so unlike my usual self that I was sent to bed right after dinner, with a dose of castor-oil!
At the Art lesson next day, when Miss Carr asked how I was, I replied, “I am fine now; I loved the pigs but they made me ill.” She looked at me a minute, then said, “I know, they upset me too and they should have been funny pigs.”
The lessons varied a great deal. Much depended on how Emily Carr felt herself, and quite naturally, on how I felt, and responded. Shall I tell you of an average day and then of a poor one?
As we proceeded to the spot chosen for that lesson, we made a happy group: the monkey, three dogs, quite often the parrot, Miss Carr and myself, loaded down as we always were with the camp stools, easels, paper, bags of brushes and pencils. Now I often wonder how we could concentrate as we did, but after we had reached the spot chosen for the day, and had arranged and settled ourselves, the animals seemed to know they were to have their fun quietly, and they did.
Miss Carr had one hard and fast rule; she always painted with her back to anyone who was around, and set her stool in such a fashion that strangers could not come up behind her to stare over her shoulder.
Almost the entire shore line was wonderful material, with great banks of rock, some nearly solid with trees. The browns and greens she loved so predominated, with the sea and the sky for all the harmony that was needed. I would be left to myself for an hour or so. The subject I chose, and the meaning I chose to stress, were left entirely to my whim of the morning. We would ignore each other as far as speaking, or deliberately distracting one another was concerned, but we both felt the moral support we each received from the other’s company. Often, many years later, when all her painting had been ended, she would squeeze my hand as she lay so ill and say, “Baboo, I am so glad we had such splendid times together. Our days painting in the woods and on the shore, I live them over and over, and am happy again.” I think she knew I did too.
After an hour or so, she would come over and stand beside me a while, to get the feel of what it was I was striving to express. Sometimes she would say, “Scrape, Child, scrape, scrape.” That meant, “All wrong. Start over!” Or she might say, “Save that, start fresh.” This meant generally that it was not all bad, it could be better. In the hope that the next one would be, she would have me start another so that the two pictures could be compared and criticized together. Before I reached the point where the mistake had occurred, she was back and would stand a little behind me, sometimes for an hour or so. If I was doing right she would not say a word. Often, as she stood there, a colour, perhaps, would not come just right, and I would be about ready to give up, when she would lean over, and say, “Even good soup is no soup without a dash of salt,” and add just a little of whatever it was my colour lacked. It was never what I thought it should be, and yet at once the desired tone would be there. She would say, “There, now you have it.” I cannot explain, it sounds ordinary to tell it, but the lift it, or rather she, gave my ego, her free, easy manner, would make me sit for hours the next time, mixing and scraping, and mixing again, sure that the colour I wanted was there in the shadow.
Or again, I might have the shore line, and the sky would be beautiful, and I would concentrate so hard, do a very good job, and know it. Well, time would be going (it really does go quickly, when you are painting on something you like that is going well). So I would start the foreground, still so satisfied with the sky! She’d come over, take a look, and say, “Better take a walk, Child. See that tree over there? Well, take the monkey and the dogs and walk over slowly. While there introduce the shore to the sea, and again here, when you return.” The tree might be a quarter of a mile away. Off I would go, with the pets. Not a cross word from her about the mess I was making of my canvas, nothing but, “Take a walk.” In those days I thought she did this because the animals needed walking! It was some time before I realized why she did do it. It did not happen often, of course, not unless a part was good. If all was bad, then, “Scrape, scrape.” I hated the sound of these words. After the walk I’d look at my effort, and see the bad part, so bold and rough, then I would work at it with the vigour that had gone into the good part in the first place. After my walk, it was so plain that the good part had been made to suffer, and not as I had hoped that the good part had hidden over the “rough unbound edges,” as Miss Carr called my bad places. “It is up to you, my Child,” she would say. “You know best what you are capable of. If it is worthy of you, sign it.” And again she would say, “Create, Child create, but do not copy, there are cameras for copies.” So much credit was given your ability to think things out, that when you became used to her, you just naturally did.
Some Art teachers are always taking your brush, and dabbing at this and that, making pretty pictures out of a muddle, yet leaving the impression that you did it yourself, with no true criticism. She never did. Reasons are so very important to a student. With perspective, colour, shading, and so on to worry about, a correction goes by almost unnoticed, if a logical reason is not given for its having been made. “That tree is all wrong,” some teachers would say, taking the brush and correcting the mistake. That is not appreciated by the sincere student. But when a tree does go wrong it is surprising how difficult it can become to correct it! The branches lose all supple grace and balance, all life goes out of them. You who paint will understand too well what I mean. Well, Emily Carr would come up; if it was really bad, she would set the canvas aside and on another she would do the angry tree, making such a gay dunce of it! “Meet this one, Baboo,” she would say. “It is the cousin of that one of yours, Child; scrape, scrape.” And as if by magic, my own tree would seem to grow and take life right under my brush, yet what showed on my canvas was my own effort. “It has to be, no two people work alike; we are not supposed to,” she would say, as the gathering-up of our equipment began. Yet how proud I would be, if ever, even once, I could do a small one as she used to, with the same strength and deep feeling.
Perhaps I will omit the bad day. After all they were due as much to my clumsy dabbing as to her moods, and to be honest about them would make me seem a very silly person. Her quick comments were always ready and would fit any occasion. “Waste your time if you must, but I will not have you waste mine,” was a favourite with her, if a lesson had gone by with no progress shown.
When a canvas was finished it was placed face to the wall to dry out thoroughly, and not draw my interest as I started the next. But how proud I would be, a day or so later, to enter the studio late, and find her there, with my picture propped up before her, the softest light in her eyes as she studied it. When she became aware of my presence she would nearly snap, “Well, what is it? What are you standing there for?” But when I had finished what I had come for, and started up my own little stair, “Good-night, little Baboo,” she would call softly, in the same tone of voice she used for the birds, but she would be in her room, her door already half shut. I knew that she did not want to chat, but there would be such a happy, warm glow left inside me, it was good to tumble into bed and just think about her. And she used to think she had me scared of her!
I have said that she was casual about signing her pictures. “Sign only those worthy of you,” she would say. “Set a standard, try to stick to it, and if one fails, set it aside for a time. That is one of the beauties of oil, it can be corrected, added to, any time. Sign only those worthy of you.” It is such a straightforward, simple standard to go by, yet it is surprising how hard it makes you work. There is a great satisfaction in the final touch you give to a painting, as you sign it. Yet so many, some of them important people, do not seem to understand why she did not sign all of hers. Some are very plainly not finished, though they may have been started years ago. Others just did not reach the standard she had set herself.
Once, years ago, when looking at one of my paintings after a long hard lesson, she sighed as she said to me, “Baboo, you have a softness in your work which I am not able to equal any more, but, my Child, life is not soft—just the dawns, and the twilights, and they are often racked with pain. But you are young, Child; paint and paint, and then paint.” She was sure the years would add their own touch to my work, as it had to hers.
Many of her sayings have stayed with me through the years, with the memory of the gleam in her eyes as she said them. It is a blessing I shall ever be grateful for. Her standards—what a goal to strive for!
No sham. No fraud. Or no signature.